3-043-735 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Scene of the landslip at the Savoy Mouth of the Mont Cenis Tunnel, 1872. 'The [train] traffic...has been slightly interrupted by an accident on the French side...During a thunderstorm lately, when a heavy mass of rain had poured down, the steep rocky sides of the mountains presented no surface to collect the water, so that it flowed down in one mass, and carried everything with it. It brought down a vast mass of debris extending all across the valley, and for about a quarter of a mile long. It flowed down the embankments of the railway and through the tunnel at this place, completely choking it up. The labourers have been for many days at work clearing the tunnel and railway, as well as the public road. Railway passengers were obliged here to leave the train, and walk a quarter of a mile along the road, to the mouth of the tunnel, where another train waited to receive them, and carry them through the mountain into Piedmont. The sketch...shows the railway passengers walking along the ordinary road, and the labourers at work removing the fallen earth, with the upper part visible of a house which was half-buried in it, so that only the top of the door and lower windows could be seen. Happily, the inmates escaped, and there was no loss of life'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.